Hiding the Obvious
by Arctic Banana
Summary: After a chance run in with Vetra's little sister before a day trip to visit her brother on the Tempest, Sara learns that Scott has a girlfriend he has conveniently forgotten to tell her about... -Sequel to Open Secrets-


_This story is a direct sequel to my other story, Open Secrets, so I recommend reading that first before you read this._

 _I didn't feel like doing much editing since it's almost 3am at the time of writing this and I just wanted to post this up so I can go to bed, so if you spot any glaring errors, please point them out for me._

* * *

Sara remembered once upon a time when she had a name. She was the one with all the popular friends in school while her brother hung out with the stoners and troublemakers. She was the one who liked to play soccer while Scott was more content playing video games in a dark room all day. She had good grades while Scott was intelligent but also fairly lazy and only passed due to high test scores compared to all the work he refused to do. Now instead of hearing, "Hey look, that's Sara Ryder!" every time someone walked past her in a hallway, she'd often hear, "Hey look, that's the pathfinder's sister!" because no one could remember her name beyond that, it seemed. If they were especially ignorant of their familial relationship, sometimes they'd guess that she was his girlfriend before someone else corrected them, likely because like most twins, they weren't shy on hugs and affection with each other beyond the point of what most siblings would do.

No matter where she went, she could often hear someone singing her brother's praises. They knew him as a guy who helped repair relations between the Milky Way species and the angara. He was a guy who invaded and brought down several kett bases. He rescued not one, not two, but three arks and helped instate their respective pathfinders after the former ones were tragically lost. Everyone who met her brother described him as a sweet, friendly guy with a sarcastic sense of humor who was also secretly a complete badass, but all she could see when she looked at him was the dork who got high off paint in art class with his idiot friends and microwaved his Oreos.

She was thankful about one thing though, and that was the fact that Scott hadn't completely forgotten about her with his newfound popularity. There wasn't a day she didn't wake up to about forty messages from him telling her all about what he did that day and asking her about her own day, which was more often than not monotonous and not nearly as exciting as whatever he was doing. Whenever he was at the Nexus, he always made sure to stop by and see her. He often told her that he wanted her to recover completely so she could join his crew on the Tempest and go on adventures with him. Truth be told she'd love to, but medical red tape often kept her confined to the med bay with only the Hyperion's resident hypochondriacs and people who couldn't stop picking fights with turians at the bar for company.

That day she woke up, did her normal morning routine, and returned to bed for another boring day of rereading the only book she had. When Dr. Harry Carlyle came to check her vital stats and take notes on her recovery, she almost jumped up for joy when he said, "You might actually be well enough for a visit with your brother next time he's here."

It would be the first time she ever set foot on the Tempest. It would be her first time meeting most of his friends, too. She'd met Cora a couple times when she personally came down to see how she was doing as she'd known their father and felt obligated to do so, but most of his friends seemed to stay away and allow her to recover in peace. He told her about most of them in his numerous emails so she sort of knew what to expect, but she wondered how much he had told them about her in return.

"Okay, I spoke with Lexi and she agreed and says she can keep an eye on you while you're there. You just have to get ahold of your brother and arrange a time when you can meet with him," Harry said as he flipped through some of her medical records. "Just remember not to stay out too long, don't overexert yourself..."

"Should I wrap myself up in bubble wrap and put a helmet on for good measure too?" she asked sarcastically. "Oh, and maybe we can ask my brother to sand down all the sharp corners on the ship for me!"

"I can tell you're twins because you both are a pair of smart asses," Harry noted. "And on another note, I asked around and found another book for you, so hopefully you haven't already read it."

Scott of course was excited to spend some time with his older sister that wasn't confined to a single room. His usual million messages were wrought with eagerness at their upcoming visit. All Sara could think was that she was probably going to come down with turian avian flu or something else inconvenient on the date they'd set, knowing her luck as of late.

"If I'm going to be leaving the Hyperion soon, can I maybe walk around for once?" she pleaded. She was sick of being confined to a bed and wanted to see what the rest of the station was like. She'd rarely ever been on board the Nexus proper as he always refused to allow her to go far.

Harry didn't seem totally on board with the idea, but no matter how hard he tried to come up with an excuse, he couldn't exactly come up with a reason not to. Her vital signs were actually improved and her brain activity was mostly normal. The only thing he was really looking out for was the fact that she seemed to get tired a lot more easily and sometimes had dizzy spells.

"If you promise to sit down if you start getting dizzy and call me, you can maybe go walk around for a bit," he agreed. "But..."

"Don't go too far. I know," Sara sighed. She felt like a little girl again, being chastised by her overprotective father for wandering too far from the house, while her brother meanwhile was being ignored long enough that he was currently being sent home in the backseat of a C-Sec vehicle after he'd been caught committing petty vandalism with his troublemaking hanar friend.

She ate the same bland meal she had day after day, read some of the book that Harry had traded with someone for her (which she thankfully had not read before), and got a quick nap in to try to help prevent herself from getting tired while she was out exploring. Part of her wondered if Harry was secretly going to tail her to make sure she kept out of trouble. She had a particularly amusing mental image of him hiding inside of a potted plant that was way too small to hide anyone in an attempt to spy on her.

She wasn't out long before someone spotted and recognized her. Normally anyone who recognized her was human since they didn't get many aliens in the Hyperion's medical bay unless it was an emergency on their part, so she had to remind herself that her brother was well known to the Nexus in general when a turian girl seemed to recognize her.

She seemed to be in her late teens, almost an adult, and after looking at her Sara had to wonder if she was this hyper naturally or if she was the real reason for the Nexus' coffee bean shortage. It was clear the turian recognized her from the excited way her head snapped in her direction and the stupid smile she immediately had.

"You're the pathfinder's sister!" she proclaimed. "Your name's Sara, right?"

Sara turned her head, suddenly curious as to who this turian was. It wasn't often that anyone bothered to learn her name beyond "pathfinder's sister". "Yes. Yes it is," she replied suspiciously.

"I knew it! I recognized your face from the holo on Scott's table!"

Okay, now she really wanted to know who the hell this girl was. "Uh, do you know my brother?" she inquired.

"Scott? Yeah! I'm Sidera Nyx. My sister, Vetra, is your brother's girlfriend!" Sara must have had a wide eyed blank expression on her face because Sidera quickly backtracked. "Uh...I mean..."

"My brother is dating your sister?" Sara asked.

Of all the things Scott had mentioned in his messages, "I'm dating a turian!" was oddly not one of them. He had mentioned this Vetra Nyx girl several times before and went on and on about her, but she had just figured they'd been really close friends. With the power of hindsight, he did really seem invested in this girl's life beyond that of someone who just wanted to be friends and some of his comments that she mistook for being overly friendly did sound oddly romantic in nature in a way that made her feel stupid that she hadn't noticed it earlier. Maybe it was just the fact that she had always just assumed her brother was gay all these years that threw her off. Hell, maybe he just preferred alien girls over human.

"You...didn't know?" Sid asked. She suddenly looked like she realized she'd done something wrong and was silently panicking. Sara got the feeling that she wasn't exactly an expert of keeping secrets.

"What? Oh, no, I knew my brother was dating your sister. I just didn't know you were related to his girlfriend when I first saw you," she lied, hoping to make her feel a little less like shit for betraying what might have been a secret. "I haven't officially met her yet, but I should meet her soon."

Sid seemed incredibly relieved. "Oh, well in that case, tell her I said hi when you see her!"

"Oh don't worry. I will," Sara replied. _Right after I murder her boyfriend._

* * *

She assumed that Sid hadn't told either Scott or her sister that Sara now knew about their relationship because Scott didn't act any weirder than he usually did when he came to pick her up. He gave her the usual hug that was way too tight and then tried to kiss her because he knew how much it annoyed her.

"Cheek-seeking missiles inbound!" he shouted while he still had her in an iron grasp.

"Scott, no! Stop!" she protested as she struggled to push him away. "I don't want any kisses!"

"You can't hide from the impact!" he said before finally making contact with her face.

The second he released her she began wiping at her face with the back of her sleeve as though he'd just smeared something unpleasant on her. "Why are you so annoying?" she demanded.

"Because I'm your little brother. It's my job to be annoying!" he replied pleasantly.

They overheard a chuckle coming from Harry nearby as he gathered up the sheets from Sara's bed so they'd be clean by the time she got back.

"So, you think you can make the walk back to the Tempest, or do you need me to piggyback you there?"

"I can walk, Scott. My legs aren't broken," Sara replied dryly. She grabbed her backpack from the floor next to her bed which contained her book and a box of Galaxy Scout cookies that a friend she'd made in the medbay had sent her to help her recover. "Shall we?"

"Okay, but if you're suddenly out of breath, I'm going to make you crawl the rest of the way to the Tempest," he warned, though she was sure the threat was fairly empty. Then again he did once leave her on the bathroom floor when she was sick and tell their mother when she got home that he figured at least this way it would be easier to clean up if she threw up.

He was a regular Chatty Cathy on the way to the Tempest, telling her all about how excited he was that she finally got to visit him instead of the other way around and describing some of his friends to her. She noticed how quickly he glossed over Vetra when he got to describing her, almost as though he was afraid of slipping up and saying something that might make her suspicious of the two of them.

As she had at this point come to expect, everyone from passersby to random guards greeted Scott either by name or by his title as they walked by, which extended to some of these new aliens called the angara. He'd break from his one-sided conversation with her just long enough to wave or call out a name when passing someone he actually knew personally and high fived a turian they walked past that he immediately informed her was the turian pathfinder, Avitus Rix.

The Tempest crew were already aware of Sara's visit and seemed to be nonplussed by how excited Scott became as he dragged his sister onto the ship. Maybe he spoke about her often after all, or maybe they were just used to him being a big ball of energy at times by now.

"You know Cora and Lexi," Scott said as he started introducing anyone within eyesight. "Over there's Liam..."

"Hi," Liam waved, though he seemed to be preoccupied with something else.

"...and that girl right there is my science officer, Suvi."

"Can't talk right now! My samples are germinating!" Suvi shouted excitedly as she ran by with a petri dish containing some unknown purple slime.

"You'll learn that that's normal fairly quickly if you spend enough time around here," Scott said of her behavior.

"Oh, that must be Peebee!" Sara said when she pointed out an asari that wasn't Lexi disappearing through a door while fixated on a stream of remnant data that she was looking over.

"Yeah, that's her," Scott nodded.

Sara recalled some of her brother's previous messages. "She's not going to hurt me, is she?"

"We discussed the possibility of you signing an accident waver before boarding the ship," Scott replied. When he noticed her glaring at him he added, "Kidding!" He looked around for anyone else in the immediate vicinity. "Oh hey! And that right there is Jaal!"

The angara in question looked up when he heard his name. He noticed a girl with Scott who he assumed could only be his older twin sister. He suddenly felt his heart palpitate at the sight of her. Of all the humans he'd met in the past couple of months, he'd never seen any that he thought was so gorgeous, and the holo on Scott's table in his room of the two of them together did not seem to do her beauty justice. A beam of light suddenly seemed to shine down straight on her as though the gods themselves were calling attention to her features. The soft petals of illumination seemed to frame her face just right as she pushed her loose, untied hair out of her eyes.

"There, I fixed the damn light. Tell Kallo to stop bitching at me about it!" Gil said as he got down off the ladder after repairing a broken light just above where Sara was currently standing.

"And that's our engineer, Gil!" Scott said cheerfully as he pointed him out while failing to notice that Jaal seemed to be stunned speechless on just the other side of the room.

Gil seemed to have just noticed that Sara was standing there, having been too fixated on the light to see anyone come in. "Oh. You must be Sara, the slightly less evil twin," he greeted her before offering her a handshake.

"Are you alright, Jaal?" Scott asked when he finally noticed that he'd been standing in place, staring at them for a while.

Jaal suddenly realized he'd been staring far longer than he intended and quickly tried to make himself look busy. "I'm fine. Nothing's wrong!" he said unconvincingly as he walked away.

Sara looked around hoping to catch a glimpse of the female turian that she knew for a fact was a member of this crew. She knew they'd be introduced eventually and Scott just hadn't found her yet, but of all the members of his crew, she was the one that Sara was most interested in for obvious reasons.

And then she saw her. It was obvious from a first glance why her brother liked her. She was tall with really long legs and a thin waist, had a petite but nonetheless slightly muscular frame, and though she couldn't see the finer details from here, she was certain her eyes must have been just as gorgeous as the rest of her. In other words she was the kind of girl that Sara had been genetically programmed to be jealous of, if only because someone who looked like that might normally be competition for someone she liked.

As Vetra caught sight of them and started to approach, Sara tried not to make it too obvious that she was staring her down, daring her to make a move on her brother so she could call him on it.

Vetra seemed to attempt to move in for a kiss when she got to them, but Scott quickly turned away and pretended he didn't notice what she had just attempted. "This woman here is my friend, Vetra!" he introduced her to his sister.

Vetra looked at him suspiciously. Evidently she was either unaware that he hadn't told his sister about their relationship or fully aware and attempting to subtly rectify that. "And you must be Sara," she replied in a cold, flat tone, though she was looking at Scott instead of her. Slowly she turned to look at her face. "So nice to meet you."

Sara in turn played dumb, pretending that she was unaware of the love that this woman apparently shared with Scott. "Nice to meet you too! I met your sister on the Nexus."

A panicked look struck Scott's face. Evidently Sid's lack of discretion was as well known as she suspected.

"Sid? I hope she wasn't too annoying," Vetra replied in a knowing look.

"So what did she say to you?" Scott asked in a surprisingly calm manner.

"Oh, not much. She just said that she knew you personally," Sara replied. "And she told me that her sister was on the crew."

Scott seemed satisfied, buying that that was all of the information that Sid had relinquished. "So, let's go see if we can find the rest of the crew!" he said, desperate to escape from an awkward situation.

"Yes, Scott. Wouldn't want to keep Sara in the dark, now would we?" Vetra replied in a caustic tone that he somehow doubted was related to her not having met some of the crew yet.

She met the others shortly after. Kallo had a few brief seconds to say hello before he started yelling at Gil for placing a drink on a console without using a coaster. Scott described interactions such as this as "Kallo and Gil admitting their love for one another" which seemed to earn angry looks from both of them. She met the krogan named Drack next. Sara wasn't all that surprised that her brother would be friends with a krogan considering he knew one back at home, but she was surprised to find that unlike his friend in the Milky Way, they weren't relatively close in age. In fact, Drack seemed fairly ancient, which he freely admitted when he joked that he was alive when they invented gravity.

"Who is 'they'?" Scott asked.

"You know. THEY," Drack replied cryptically.

She met the final two members of the crew shortly after, a tiny little hamster that her brother had named Peek-a-Boo, and a fat pyjak that was lounging in a chair a few feet from the hamster cage named Bonkers.

"So this is the mischievous Bonkers that you've been telling me about?" Sara asked as she reached out towards the pyjak. The space monkey's tongue flicked out from the end of his snout and licked up the side of her hand.

"Yep. Though lately all he seems to do is lay about, eat, and sleep, so he's getting kind of chubby."

"Oh my god, it's like you both were separated at birth," Sara teased her brother.

They both took a seat on his couch. Scott propped his feet up on the table in front of him, which she noted was pulled forward at an odd angle so it could be used as a foot rest.

"So," Sara said, "what was up with Vetra?" She tried to play it stupid and make it seem like she knew less than she really did. She wanted him to trip up on his own without suspecting that she knew anything.

"What do you mean by that?" Scott asked.

"I mean did you both get into a fight or something? She seemed a little displeased with you," Sara replied.

"Oh, that," Scott replied. She could tell he was searching his mind for an answer that didn't reveal that he was dating and probably even sleeping with the sole turian member of his crew. "I don't know. Maybe she's just having an off day or something," he replied.

"Does she usually have off days like this?" she pressed.

"Not really. She's normally quite pleasant," he admitted, "though like pretty much everyone else she can have her moments."

Sara was totally not buying his generic excuse, but she didn't let on. "Oh? Like what kind of moments?"

"I don't know, maybe...girl stuff? What do you normally get upset over?" he replied dismissively.

"You've known me for 22 years and you have no idea what upsets me?" Sara asked blankly.

"Uh..."

"The answer is a lot of things. I get upset when you drink the last soda. I get upset when I go clothes shopping and find that size 10 is apparently now considered plus sized. I get upset when people hide things from me..." She gave him a side glance, hoping that he might catch onto what she just said and be motivated to reveal something to her.

Evidently he may have caught on just a little bit because he quickly tried to change the subject. "Hey look, it's about lunchtime! Do you want to go get something to eat?"

Before she could answer he was already on his feet and headed out the door down the hall. Sara looked at the pyjak, who was still lounging about lazily on the very edge of the chair, several rolls of fat and a comically thin tail looking like they were attempting to escape over the side to the floor.

"Do you think I should tell him now or just screw with him until he finally admits it?" Sara asked the pyjak. He made an indiscriminate chirp and rolled over onto his side, which seemed to take some effort due to how fat he had gotten.

* * *

Sara could hear muffled whispering from the other side of the kitchen door when she approached, backpack dangling from one hand.

The first voice was unmistakable as Vetra's. "We are not going through this again Scott! You mean to tell me you haven't told her?"

"I...she was sick. I might have delayed telling her until she got better and then just kind of forgot that I never told her," her brother admitted.

"So why not just tell her?" Vetra asked. "Why draw this out? She's going to find out eventually and better from you than someone else!"

"Well, I kind of don't want her to get angry with me," he replied. "I waited kind of long to tell her. What if she's pissed?"

"Is it better for you to have your sister pissed off at you for a couple of days, or your girlfriend pissed off at you for months? Think about your answer carefully," Vetra asked corrosively. "I told my sister right away. The fact that you haven't told your sister yet baffles me."

Sara didn't realize that she'd leaned on the panel until the door seemed to open on its own. Scott and Vetra were both huddled by the fridge, faces close together so they could muffle their voices a little better. When Scott saw his sister standing there, he walked past Vetra and leaned against the sink.

"Hey, Sara. Why don't you sit down and I'll find you something to eat?" he offered, ignoring the daggers that Vetra was glaring his way.

"Actually I brought some cookies and I think I'll just eat a few of those," Sara replied, holding up her backpack.

Vetra pushed past Scott on the way out of the kitchen and turned her head to glare at him. "Excuse me," she said as she passed Sara.

"Cookies. Hmm...okay, I guess I'll just find something for me, then," Scott said as he started flipping open the doors to the pantry.

Sara noticed that Vetra headed to her brother's room. She was fairly certain that most crew members weren't normally permitted to just walk into her brother's room without his express permission…

* * *

Sara noticed the slow movement in her peripheral vision. Wordlessly she grabbed the fork from her brother's food and stabbed the table right where his hand had been only a moment prior.

Scott stared at her in shock at the action. "You tried to stab me with a fork!"

"You tried to steal one of my cookies," she replied as though that justified the action.

"You have an entire box! I don't think you'll miss just one!" he pointed out.

She sighed as she reached for another cookie from the box. "Scott, most of the time we've been in Andromeda, I've either been in a coma or been asleep. Let me have this just this once, please."

"Hey, I'm sure Vetra can hook you up with more if you just ask her," Scott replied.

"If that's the case then why don't you just ask her to get you your own box of Galaxy Scout cookies?" Sara asked nonchalantly.

"Because then I'd have to wait and I want one now!" he replied.

"Tough tits. If you want a snack, go eat that box of crackers you found in the back of the cabinet."

He looked at the box on the counter with a mild look of terror. "But they're so old that they literally taste like dust!" he replied.

"Not my problem," she stated before popping a cookie into her mouth.

"Why are you being so stingy about a cookie?" he asked.

"Because you once stole a cookie from me at snack time in kindergarten, and I never forgot."

"Wait, you're holding a grudge over a cookie I took from you when we were six years old? What, are you keeping count?"

"Actually..." Sara brought up a document labeled "Score Card" on her omnitool. "December 24, 2171: You ate the entire plate of cookies that I left out for Santa and replaced them with the rice cakes that Mom told you you could eat instead!"

Scott looked stunned a moment. "Oh my god, you really were keeping count weren't you?"

"January 14, 2176: You drank the soda that I hid in the back of the fridge."

"Well clearly it wasn't hidden very well if I found it, now was it?"

"October 7, 2179: You callously ate the last strawberry yogurt without thinking of me, and then when Mom packed our lunch the next day she had to give me mixed berry, but I couldn't eat it because I have to have strawberry yogurt with my lunch and mixed berry _isn't_ the same as strawberry, and my entire lunch was ruined!"

"I didn't eat it!" Scott protested. "I hid it in the crawlspace under the stairs because I wanted to see what it would look like in ten years!" He suddenly had a thought occur to him. "Oh shit, I think I left it there when we moved out. Whoever got the house after us probably got one hell of a surprise."

"Why couldn't you have used the mixed berry for that?!" Sara demanded.

"Because it specifically had to be strawberry. Mixed berry isn't the same," Scott insisted.

"Well, now you know why I'm not giving you a cookie, and you only have yourself and your strawberry yogurt-thieving ways to blame."

Scott huffed and pretended to lose interest in her cookies as he went back to his meager offerings of an MRE that he regretted opening because it tasted just as bad as it smelled. He monitored his sister with side glances, waiting for the right moment before snatching a cookie right out from under her and took off down the hall. Sara immediately took off after him, but his head start allowed him to reach his room before her.

He quickly shut and locked his door behind him. The second his sister caught up, he could hear her banging on the other side. "What's the password?" he teased.

"Scott! You had better not eat that cookie!" she shouted back.

"Sorry, that's not it!" he replied.

"That cookie had better not be anywhere near your mouth right now!" she warned.

"Too late. Already licking it."

"You better stop licking it!"

"Okay, I stopped. I'm just putting it in my mouth instead."

Sara could faintly hear him chewing through the door. "Well you better not enjoy that cookie!" she threatened.

"Wow, this cookie is amazing! It's like an orgasm in my mouth!"

"I hope you choke on it..." she grumbled.

"Too bad. Just swallowed it. Airway remains unblocked."

"Well then I hope you get indigestion!"

Scott was about to comeback with another witty retort when he turned around and saw Vetra staring at him from their shared bed, the fat pyjak sprawled across her stomach and snoring loudly.

"Should I be concerned about this?" Vetra asked.

"Concerned about what?" he asked.

"That I'm currently trapped in a room with a pair of monkeys," she replied. "One of them is always trying to hump my leg and the other is a pyjak."

* * *

Scott would probably stay locked in his room for a while, so Sara decided to return to her cookies. There was shuffling in the kitchen and she hoped she didn't have to smack a bitch for touching her cookies. When she entered the room however, her cookies and Scott's MRE both remained untouched on the table. It was her brother's angara friend who was in the kitchen and he was fishing a glass out of the cabinet for some water. He looked at her with surprise when she entered the room.

"Oh hey. Jaal, right?" Sara said when she saw him.

 _She remembered my name!_ Jaal thought to himself as he quickly looked away to hide any sign that he might be nervous. "Yes," he replied, "Ama Darav."

She looked confused. "What?"

"Oh, sorry. Jaal Ama Darav. It's my full name, like how yours is Sara Ryder."

"Oh. Cool," she replied calmly before taking her seat and returning her attentions to her cookies.

Jaal fumbled with the tap, trying to fill the glass quickly so he could get out of here sooner. Unfortunately the water came out in a thin trickle and he realized with dismay that someone must be taking a shower right now. Sometimes when the shower got overused it affected the sinks for a bit while the spent water was currently going through the filtering process. While he filled his glass he glanced over towards Scott's sister and realized she was watching him the entire time she chewed.

"So you've been with my brother for a while, right?" she asked.

Jaal tried to focus his sights on the sink. "Yes," he agreed.

"He and Vetra are totally a thing, aren't they?"

He looked up in surprise and faced her, momentarily unaware that his glass had finally filled and was now trickling out over the edge into the sink. Jaal wondered if he should say anything about the state of Vetra and Scott's relationship. The more he considered it, the more he realized that she had clearly already figured it out somehow anyway. It would be fairly obvious he was lying if he said no.

"Yes," he replied instead. "They are."

"For how long?" she pressed.

Jaal finally noticed the water and shut the sink off. As he tipped the glass to pour out some of the excess, he answered, "I'm not sure exactly, but a few months at least."

"That long and he still hasn't told me, huh?" she replied.

"If it makes you feel better, he tried to avoid telling us too," Jaal pointed out. "He actually waited so long that we figured it out on our own in that case too."

"Yeah, but I'm his sister. You'd have thought he'd at least tell his sister before bringing me here."

"Good point," Jaal agreed. Maybe it was just the fact that in a family as large as his you couldn't keep secrets for long, but his family members often announced almost right away whenever they'd found someone.

"I don't know. I wanted to wait to see how long it takes him to tell me, but at this point that could be forever. What do you think I should do, wait it out or confront him?"

"Um...I don't know," Jaal replied truthfully.

Thankfully the door opened and Scott returned to save him. He had one foot out the door in case he had to bolt to his room again. "So, Sara, what do you want to do next?" he asked her before bracing himself.

Sara exchanged a look with Jaal, who quickly looked away and excused himself with his glass of water. She smiled at her brother and dropped the rest of her cookies into her backpack. "I don't know. How about we just hang out with some of your friends? Maybe watch a vid?"

"I'd love to watch a vid, Sara," a voice said from behind Scott.

Scott was startled by the voice and turned around to find Vetra hovering over his shoulder. In a brief moment she made eye contact with Sara and it suddenly occurred to her that, whether or not Scott knew it, Vetra knew that Sara already knew. She probably knew that Sara knew right from the moment that Sara mentioned having run into her sister. The girl really didn't seem like the kind of person you'd trust a nation's secrets to.

"Uh...okay. Maybe pick one out and I'll call everyone who's interested to my room?" Scott replied nervously.

Vetra broke eye contact with Sara. "Works for me."

"Oh, I know. Do you guys have that one vid, _A Drama in Blue_?" Sara suggested.

"That rom com where a woman tries to hide her relationship with her asari girlfriend from her family out of fear that they'll disapprove, but it turns out they already know?" Vetra replied. "Yeah, that's a great one! I'll go check our database!"

"Oh crap, this isn't another chick flick, is it?" Scott asked with a groan.

Sara sighed at the realization that this all was going completely over his head.

* * *

It turned out it was a chick flick. Jaal, Peebee, and Suvi all seemed into it. Gil not so much, and Drack had fallen asleep and was snoring loudly. Sara and Vetra were more preoccupied with periodically glaring at Scott than watching the movie. Scott at this point looked like he needed an IV drip made of all of the Blasto vids to survive to the end.

Perhaps in an attempt to annoy him, Vetra leaned the other way against Gil's side and rested her head on his shoulder. Gil glanced at her briefly as though wondering what the fuck she was doing, but then stopped caring when he noticed that Scott seemed hilariously jealous that a gay man was currently getting more attention from his girlfriend than he was. He put two and two together and figured that Scott must not have told Sara and now Vetra was screwing with him because of it. Hell, he was all for a bit of some good-natured screwing with people and even put his arm around her to rub it in.

"What's the matter, Scott? You seem a little upset about something," Sara asked him.

"Nothing's the matter," Scott replied as he tore his eyes away from his girlfriend. "Nothing at all..."

* * *

"Okay, so no fatigue, no dizziness, nothing that I feel I need to be concerned about," Lexi confirmed as she gave Sara a quick checkup. "I'll let Harry know you're doing fine. Is there anything else you want to bring up while you're in here?"

"Yes, actually. How long do you think it's going to take my brother to admit he and Vetra are together?" she asked.

Lexi almost dropped her charts and stared off straight ahead into the wall. "Is he seriously doing this again?" she asked, confirming what Jaal had said earlier about him not telling them either.

"He is," she nodded. "And Vetra's already figured out that I know, but either he hasn't or he's in denial."

"Do you want me to yell at him for you?" Lexi offered.

"Neh, I think Vetra's already doing that enough for me," Sara replied.

"Good. She can probably do it better than I can." Lexi sat down at a monitor and started typing up her message to the Nexus. "Anything else?" she asked when she realized that Sara was still here.

"So...Jaal? Does he always act like...uh..."

"A dork?" Lexi completed her sentence, using a word that often found its way into Sara's usual lexicon. "Yes. It's one of his many charms. Why, were you talking to him earlier?"

"Yeah, and he was acting weird, or at least I thought he was acting weird. I don't really know him all that well. I guess maybe that's just normal for him?"

"I wouldn't know unless I knew exactly how he was acting," she admitted.

Sara shrugged. "It's no big deal. But if you're done checking on me, I'd like to return to my visit now."

Lexi motioned towards the unlocked door. "As you wish."

Scott was likely in his room waiting for her to finish her checkup, but that's not where she decided to head. She instead headed towards the hangar bay where most of the ship's action seemed to take place. Liam was still preoccupied with whatever he'd been doing earlier when Scott had introduced him and Suvi was running by with a clean towel and a hot water bottle and proclaiming that the purple slime in her petri dish was having babies to the apparent worry of everyone but her.

"Vetra?" she asked Liam.

"She's in here somewhere. Check over there, that's usually her room," he replied before pointing out a door on the opposite side of the hangar.

As Sara began to walk past the Nomad, the door opened and a hand pulled her inside. "Get in!" Vetra shouted before shutting the door.

Sara looked around the interior, which was lit up with brightly colored lights to help them find the various buttons and latches in the dark. Vetra reached overhead and hit a switch which turned out to be an overhead light.

"So you wanted to see me as much as I wanted to see you, I take it?" Sara asked.

"The Nomad's the safest place to speak to you. Your brother knows the password to the lock on my door," Vetra replied. "So. I know you know that I know that you know I'm your brother's girlfriend."

"I figured that was probably obvious," she nodded. "And for the record, I don't have any problems with my brother seeing someone, just that he's seeing someone and trying to hide it from me."

Vetra nodded. "The problem is I can't tell if he knows that you're aware and is just being an idiot or if he's denser than the core of a gas giant."

"I've known my brother since the womb. The answer could go either way," Sara admitted. "So what are you getting at?"

"You want to help me screw with him so he'll admit it?"

"What did you have in mind?" Sara asked with clear interest.

The door to the Nomad opened and Gil tossed in a pillow and blanket before climbing into the backseat and displacing them both. "I hope you two don't plan on staying too long. I've been up for about twenty hours and need to get some sleep," he stated as he made himself comfortable.

"Gil, why are you sleeping in the Nomad?" Vetra asked.

"Because it has heated seats and a lock on the doors so Kallo can't come in and bother me," Gil replied. "And I so warmly thank you and Ryder for that time you contributed your genetic material to the place where I usually sleep, by the way."

Sara had a disturbed look on her face and mumbled "Gross..." under her breath. That was not exactly a mental image she wanted of her little brother. To Vetra she added, "Okay, so you were saying?"

* * *

The long day was beginning to come to an end and Sara's curfew was drawing closer. Soon Harry would be calling her to request that she came back before the Nexus switched into night mode and Sara was starting to feel tired already. She spent most of her days sleeping and hadn't yet readjusted to being awake and on her feet as long as she had been all day.

Naturally Scott assumed that she was about to tell him that she planned on heading out soon when she returned from her checkup with Lexi. What she said instead caught him completely off guard.

"Hey, it's getting late, so I think instead of heading back to the Nexus, I'm just going to stay here tonight."

Scott paused his game and looked at her as though she were a star about to go supernova a few feet away from him. "Stay here? I thought you had to go back to the medbay."

"Well I spoke with Lexi and she spoke with Harry and we all agreed it would be okay if I stayed here for one night. I think I'll just crash on your couch."

Scott looked horrified of the idea, as Vetra had told her he probably would be. Since their relationship became common knowledge to the crew, he wasn't used to sleeping without her. "Yes...on my couch..." he said as though he was still processing this. "Wouldn't you be more comfortable in the backseat of the Nomad? My couch is kind of lumpy and the Nomad has heated seats..."

 _After what Gil told me, I wouldn't sleep there in a thousand years,_ Sara thought to herself. "Your engineer is already sleeping in there."

"Dammit..." Scott mumbled under his breath.

"I think I can handle sleeping on your couch for a night. It's just a few lumps," she shrugged.

"Uh, yeah, Sara, you can't sleep in my room because..." Scott grew silent when he realized he couldn't think up a viable excuse that didn't outright admit he usually slept with a turian at night and didn't want to get caught. "I talk in my sleep."

"Scott, you shout in your sleep. And then sometimes you wake yourself up and tell whoever's nearest to you to shut up. That's nothing new to me," she pointed out.

"Well did you know I sometimes punch people in my sleep?" he asked.

"You're going to punch me from across the room?"

"I dunno. Maybe I might start sleepwalking now too?"

"Okay Scott, what's the real reason you don't want me to sleep on your couch?"

Sara could almost see the synapses in his brain working overtime to try to process another excuse that didn't sound like something he came up with five seconds ago, but he clearly looked defeated when he came up with nothing. He sighed and finally seemed ready to admit it.

"So uh...you know Vetra?"

"We might have met," Sara replied dryly.

"Well she's kind of my girlfriend..."

" _No!"_ she said in the most dramatic manner possible.

"Yeah. And she kind of sleeps in here with me, so I don't usually host sleepovers because...uh..."

"Let me stop you right there," Sara interrupted him before the conversation got too squicky for her to handle. "So you mean to tell me that you hooked up with one of your crew members and you never bothered to tell me?"

"Maybe..." he replied. "I kind of wasn't sure how you'd react to the news." He braced himself for a potential reaming as his sister reacted to what he thought was news.

"I'm a little surprised actually. All this time I thought you were gay!" she said ecstatically.

Scott looked confused. "Why the hell did you think I was gay?"

"Because you've had two boyfriends and this is the first time I've ever seen you interested in a girl?" she pointed out.

"Oh," he replied as he thought about it. "I guess that does make me seem like...but I'm not!"

"Well obviously." She heard a beep from her omnitool as she received a message. "Well, I guess that's Harry's signal that I need to go back."

"Wait...I thought you said you were sleeping here? Why is he asking you to...oh shit..."

"Cheek-seeking missiles inbound!" Sara said cheerfully before giving him a kiss. "Goodbye, talk to you later!" she waved before walking out and leaving him standing there by himself. On her way out she ran into Jaal returning his empty drinking glass to the kitchen sink. "Hey, Jaal! I was just leaving. You want to walk me out?"

Jaal looked like his entire brain fried at the question and he just stared at her in a silent daze.

"Say yes," Drack instructed him with a knowing smile.

"Oh. Sure!" Jaal agreed before following her to the ship's exit.

They passed Vetra, who gave her a fist bump on the way by, a gesture Vetra had picked up from being in close proximity to humans for most of her life. She headed straight for Scott's room and walked right past him before grabbing a few of her things.

"You played me..." Scott said as she started walking out again.

"Yep. And since we're apparently not actually in a relationship, I think I'm going to go crash with Cora tonight," Vetra said on her way out. "Have fun sleeping with the pyjak!"

Scott looked at his bed where Bonkers was laying sprawled across the mattress. The pyjak looked straight at him and brazenly started peeing on his side of the bed as though daring him to do something about it.

Even the pyjak wanted him to sleep on the couch tonight, apparently.

* * *

 _So I've noticed that the Andromeda fandom seems to be rather dead as of late, at least in terms of fanfiction output. Is this because school started, or is it directly related to BioWare giving up on the game completely?_


End file.
